


running out

by inverse



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Team 7 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-31
Updated: 2006-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-31 12:05:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverse/pseuds/inverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she sells seashells by the seashore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	running out

The sun hangs overhead and Sakura thinks she could die of a heat stroke. It hurts to stare at the sky – it’s too bright and her eyes sting. The water is warm under her feet, around her feet, sliding around her skin in lazy laps. Faraway Naruto floats with his back to the sky, blowing bubbles until he’s short of breath, breaks out of the water, and then repeats the ritual.

Time out. Team 7 doesn’t get this anymore, didn’t have this anymore until they got Sasuke back. They said it was a miracle; Sakura thinks it’s just luck. He came back like a casualty of war, broken in places, all bits and pieces, pale and pinched like he had been taking refuge instead. Skin grey and eyes red; tired. Sakura didn’t care how he came back, didn’t care why, remembers hugging him and crying like a fool like she did so many times, until he collapsed in her arms and they sent him to Tsunade. She let go because she knew he was lucky to be alive.

He’s looking better now, swirling the sand with a stick, barefooted and bent over. Five months can do a lot of things to a person. The blue shirt he wears is Naruto’s, and it hardly hides the mark on his left shoulder, black against his now-tan skin. He still flinches when people touch it – disgusted, Sakura knows, not because people are near him but because he’s near people, like he deserves something less.

She shields the sunlight from her eyes with her hands, turns around and eyes the high wall around the beach, imagines Kakashi-sensei squatting at the top and telling them he’s late because he got lost on the road of life again. Thirty-one, single and still reading porn. It’s not like Sakura expects anything more from a ninja; more than three-quarters of those she knows are unmarried. A tenth died young. “You’re a clever girl, Sakura,” Kakashi once told her in a tone that suggested he was going to say, “But you can be really stupid, too.” Stupid is the right word; hands full with two boys just as stupid as she is, she can’t complain. But Kakashi has his hands full with two stupid boys and one stupid girl who will probably never grow up. Sakura wonders how he manages, if he actually does, and wishes he had taught her something else other than ninjutsu.

“Oi,” Naruto says, suddenly at her feet with his hand a vice around her ankle. “It’s a sunny day, so stop moping,” he grins, and she squats down to slap a hand on his forehead so his hair sticks to his skin and covers his eyes. He frowns and squints and sticks his lower lip out.

“I’m not moping, stupid,” she tells him as gently as she can allow, tugging at a strand of hair hard enough for it to hurt. He says, “Give me a break,” letting go of her ankle with another lopsided grin and slinking back into the water. She watches him backstroke lazily into the horizon, smiling up at the sun, swimming away, away, away. They’re all lost at sea and he’s the only one who isn’t aware, and Sakura isn’t sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. She looks in Sasuke’s direction and finds him still drawing figures in the wet sand, the waves lapping at his toes. He draws like he knows they’ll be washed away – with indifferent strokes, gashing at the sand like he wants to wound the beach.

Later Sakura buys lemonade for all of them. The stall owner asks if she can manage with three cups, and she tells him pointedly that she has larger hands than it appears. Naruto lies spread-eagled on the ground, drying his hair out in the lazy three o’clock sun with Sasuke by his side, curled up with his knees to his chest. She sits down, never mind the sand getting in her shorts, hands them their lemonade and resists the urge to brush the hair out of Sasuke’s eyes. They’re not twelve anymore, but that’s the problem.

“Nice afternoon,” she tries commenting, but all that comes out is some sort of squeak, and all she feels like is useless. She catches Naruto’s eye and he rolls off his side, staining his white shirt quartz-yellow, sits himself up with a grunt that sounds as exasperated as they all are. On retrospect it would have made a good picture.

“I’m fine, really,” Sasuke mumbles, the hand by his mouth misshaping his words, but nobody believes this because they all aren’t. It’s like a hammer that could fall on an egg anytime. Sakura doesn’t know how, but they’re all going to leave one another someday. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.


End file.
